


Collecting Time

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Series: Walking Yggdrasil [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Astronomy, F/M, Time Gem (Marvel), Yggdrasil - Freeform, alternate universes mentioned, the astrophysics was vetted and actually is relatively accurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 19:59:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6092320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The orange Time Gem allows the user total control over the past, present and future. What could possibly go wrong if Loki gets his hands on it first?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collecting Time

Yondu finally cut Natasha and Loki in on a job that would get them to the orange stone that they wanted. It was actually in the middle of a dangerous area of space that had been nicknamed a Black Widow cluster; Loki had smirked at Natasha when Yondu mentioned it. "Most ships can't make that run," Yondu explained, shaking his head. "Scan can't get through the crap there, and no one sane is going to fly a ship through there."

"Why?"

"The gravity in the center of the gas cloud is just about impossible to get past. No nav computer can calculate how to maneuver through the black holes and stars in there. You can try to skim close to the center, but everyone that tried didn't make it out alive. Lots of widows left behind."

"Hence the name," Natasha said dryly.

"Exactly. Get caught in a black hole, you're done for. There's no way in or out of it. So whoever put that stone there knew what they were doing."

"If ships that get too close get pulled in," Natasha reasoned before Loki could, "how could they have left the stone there in the first place?"

"Sensor readings from dozens of worlds and their exploring missions can't breach the cloud in most areas, but one team thought they got some readings. Couldn't get normal light or infrared," Yondu reported with a careless shrug, "but they thought they got some waves bouncing back with an image, and they said _something_ is in the center of that cloud."

"But nobody knows for sure," Loki drawled.

"Black Widow cluster," Yondu stressed. "But it's the best guess I have for where your precious stone might be. There's a field that scanners can't go through, a gravitational nightmare no one in their right mind wants to pilot through, empty space and something in it."

"Not even Thanos?" Loki asked.

Shaking his head, Yondu leaned back in his chair and looked over the conference table in his office space. "Nothing can escape the event horizon of a black hole. Nobody made of flesh and bone has ever survived it, and that's all he is, no matter how powerful he thinks he is."

"Point," Natasha agreed. "So why do you think we can get this stone now?"

"Because of your boy here," Yondu said, pointing at Loki. He was in his Asgardian appearance, the one he felt most comfortable with. "What you do, that's magic. And I've heard enough tales of magic to know that it defies logic. So odds are good that you can boost up the shields and let us punch through that event horizon. Then once we're through, you get your stone, and I see what else is in the center of the cloud. That stone can't be the only treasure in there."

"If it is?" Loki asked coldly.

Yondu smiled, eyes narrowed and teeth sharp. "Then I guess we'll just have to see what happens next, won't we?"

***

Siderite was a grouping of small black holes and stars near the Galaxy's supermassive black hole. The gravity effects distorted and warped spacetime in the area, which invariably caused most nav computers to freeze. Computations were difficult to start with, but they constantly changed and didn't follow Euclidean geometry. The gases in the area were denser than the ordinary vacuum of space, which confused the ship sensors as well. Visually, someone from the bridge could see that there were distortions in space, but the sensors showed _nothing._ As far as the computers were concerned, all outgoing pings were completely absorbed or lost, leading to a blank field. A fool trusting the computers more than their own eyes would follow its suggestion to fly straight through that nightmarish mess, and would be torn apart as it was pulled into the center of one of the black holes. Even if by some stroke of luck one of the smaller black holes were avoided, the baby stars' gravity wells could draw the ship into it or throw the ship right into the event horizon of the supermassive black hole.

If the stories were right, the Time Gem was inside of that cluster.

Loki wasn't pleased by the pressure put on him to come up with a spell large enough to encase the entirety of the Ravagers' ship. It couldn't interfere with the ship's propulsion systems, sensors, guidance and location response systems, yet would have to coat the shields or hull itself to prevent the ship from being torn apart by the gravitational stresses of the event horizon. He looked over at Natasha several times in the privacy of their bunk, lips curled in disdain. "I could simply create a portal there."

Natasha frowned at him. "You don't have to see where you're going first?"

Not always, but then again, he generally wasn't going somewhere that could kill him if he didn't land precisely where he needed to be. In addition, as far as they knew, _there was no air._ Space wasn't a perfect vacuum, not with all the debris, dust and objects in it, but there was no atmosphere for them to breathe, and there was no telling how long it would take them to search for the stone. If it took them more than the handful of hours a tank of oxygen could give them... It was unlikely that they could bring enough oxygen with them to find the stone and then portal out of the area.

He wanted to rip Yondu's skin from his bones, to leave his body in a messy pile of bloody organs and snarl at the Ravagers for treating him like a lackey. Natasha would point out that he had asked for it if he complained, so he buried the hate down deep. He had gone incognito on this quest of his. He had even used the glamour of a Centurion before. But it was different to wear his own face, his _true_ face, no matter what others on Asgard said, and it was painful. It was a sharp kind of pain, one that triggered self loathing and fear.

And that couldn't be tolerated. _At all._

Loki dressed in clothing layered over with glamour to feel more comfortable. It was more like his usual Asgardian garb; he didn't want to think about why that felt more like him, and was more willing to chalk it up to familiarity.

"I suppose I have to worry about your frail body," Loki told Natasha.

She snorted. "Depends on what you mean by frail. I'm strong enough for what I need to do."

It could be taken in so many ways, which was like her. Loki found it fascinating and irritating all at once. Part of her draw, actually. He didn't know if he would eventually slit her throat when too overwhelmed by her touch, or if he would let her carve into his skin.

"Is the spell that difficult?" Natasha asked when he remained silent.

"There is a lot to work around," he hedged. "The _seidr_ works best as illusions, suggestion to the mind, that kind of thing. It doesn't warp reality."

Natasha frowned in thought. "What about the magic you use for your portals? Or when we were walking on Yggdrasil itself?"

"That's not _seidr,"_ he scoffed. But it hit him suddenly, and by her arched brow, she realized it as well. "I cannot use _seidr,_ but to weave in the _spá_ may allow me to achieve what we need. I change the reality of this ship, the substance that the computers use to make its calculations. That should allow it to follow the mathematics of the space, even when time slows to a crawl."

That last part made Natasha frown. "Time slows to a crawl. What would that mean for the copy of me left behind on Earth? What would it mean for everyone I ever knew?"

Loki hadn't stopped to think of that. She was mortal. Her lifespan wasn't as long as his, and her friends on Earth would likely be dead once they crossed over the event horizon of a wormhole and then back again. Asgardians would likely still be about, with possibly only a few hundred of her years passing, but generations would rise and fall in her absence. Everyone she sacrificed her time for would be gone. She would be alone for the rest of her life.

He found no joy in that thought, while years before he might have. She had tricked him, played on his assumptions as if he was a fine instrument. Even when he was somewhat angry with her for manipulating his body in that kind of fashion, there was no pleasure in the thought of her emotional pain. He knew how terrible it would feel to lose everything, to be the lonely monster walking the world alone, to exist with no purpose.

Surprised, he realized he didn't want that for her.

"I don't know," he said, emotion making his voice thick. "But they probably will be..."

She nodded sharply, lips pressing together as her gaze shifted downward and away from him, over to a blank spot on the wall. "I'll read through the ship schematics," she said after a moment, voice without inflection. "We'll need the size and components, to make sure that magic won't interfere with them, or that they won't interfere with your spell."

"Natasha," Loki murmured.

"I don't know how magic works," she continued briskly. "But I'm sure it's complicated, and anything could disrupt it from working."

 _"Natasha."_ He waited until she looked at him, her implacable mask in place. "Come here," he suggested.

"There's too much to do," she disagreed, shaking her head. "The books I have here don't have enough detail on the propulsion systems, and the computer programming languages here are different from the ones I know—"

Loki reached over and pulled her against him abruptly. She crashed against his chest, her expression still carefully blank. He let his hands trail down her sides until he could cup the curve of her ass. "When I asked for your help, I didn't know this would happen."

"It's not your fault," she replied tonelessly.

"I'm sorry," Loki said, surprised that he meant it. "I didn't mean for you to come so far into the galaxy, to potentially leave everything behind. I really thought it would be simple. I thought the stones would be tucked away, the power kept from Thanos."

"They're hard to find. If they were easy to discover, someone would have years ago."

"That's logical," he conceded, lifting his hands to trace her spine through her clothing. Her arms were still at her sides, and she looked at him expectantly. "This has gotten complicated. More than I thought it would. You've had to do more than I asked of you."

"I knew the risk."

"You couldn't possibly."

"Missions like this usually wind up being more dangerous than we think. Going into space opened up the possibility of a lot of variables I couldn't predict or plan for. Language, dress, money, lodging, equipment..." Natasha shook her head sharply and started to disentangle herself from his embrace. "I knew it could cost me everything."

"And you came anyway," Loki murmured, stunned.

"Of course I did," Natasha replied. "There's no math involved. My sacrifice weighted against the lives of everyone on Earth? On the other realms connected to Yggdrasil? Everyone in the galaxy?" She shook her head. "There's no question what I would do."

He had known that when he thought of her, but he was surprised that she thought of it so callously as well. It didn't even seem as though she devalued herself to say such a thing; no, it was an extreme in self sacrifice. As worthy as she was in doing certain tasks, she held the value of others' lives higher than her own. It was humbling.

Loki couldn't lose her.

When she stepped back, possibly to go looking for texts about the ship, Loki pulled her back into his embrace and kissed her thoroughly. Maybe it was desperate, maybe it was too indicative of how confused he felt. "You don't have to do that," Natasha said when the kiss ended, cradling his cheek with one hand. Her smile was tender, a softer expression than she usually had for him.

It wasn't the Tsarina smiling at him, or one of the selves she had to show in public. This was her private face, he realized. This was as close to the truth of her as he had ever come before.

"I know," he rasped, holding onto her. His fingers ran through her hair, down the slope of her skull, until he reached the skin of her neck. "There's a goodness in you that I will never have," he admitted, not sure how she would react. Every time he thought he could predict her, Natasha had some kind of surprise for him. And in no longer trying to force her hand to wedge her into his preconceived ideas of her, he hadn't needed the Tsarina's strikes against his skin. It had still been pleasurable the night before to have her tie him down to the bed and tease him for hours until he had _begged_ for release, sobbing with the need for it, nearly cursing her pleased little smirk even as he adored her for it.

Natasha shook her head and brushed off his hand, clearly not believing his words. He was a liar, though, he really shouldn't have expected more.

So he grasped her neck and pulled her close, tipping her head so that he could angle his mouth over hers, his tongue sliding between her parted lips. His other hand cupped a breast, and he was gratified to have her hold his shirt in her fists. Loki loomed over her, bending her backward, sliding forward to start having her walk back toward the bed. She didn't follow his lead, and it didn't surprise him in the slightest.

Smiling against her mouth, Loki shifted his grip on her body. He caressed her back as his hands slid down to grasp her ass and lift her up against him. Natasha shifted her own grip as well, and held onto his shoulders, her legs circling his waist.

Loki carried her to the bed and laid her down gently, still kissing her thoroughly. Could she sense the care he had for her? Was this love? He thought it was, but what did he know of such emotions? What did he know of anything?

He took his time undressing her, caressing her with his lips and hands and mouth. Every time Natasha tried to speak, he placed his lips over hers, or pressed his fingers over them. "Should I silence you with a spell?" he teased, a smile curling slowly across his face.

"The only way you can get ahead is with magic, is it?" she returned, smirking.

Oh, the words _burned,_ and it hadn't been his intention to turn this into a competition.

Some of his feeling must have shown in his eyes, because her gaze softened and she cupped his face in her hands. "Loki," she murmured, pulling him down for a kiss. Her touch was soft, gentle, more like the tender way that the Tsarina touched him as he came down from the high of her touch. "Sometimes we can't help ourselves, can we?"

"No, I suppose not."

Who else would challenge him this way? Who else would understand him?

"Let me," he murmured, hand on her chest. Her fragile body was a cage for that ferocious heart and clever mind, and one day it would fail. How would he survive when it did?

She stretched back, only moving to assist in taking off her clothes or his. There was amusement in her expression, a collected kind of calm that Loki thought meant she didn't understand what was happening. _You don't have to do this,_ she had said. Perhaps she thought he was returning the favor of being Tsarina. Or that he was sorry for something, that this would make up for the sacrifices she made for the galaxy.

So he let his body speak to her in ways his lips never could. This could be honest. This could be true. This could be worthy of her.

Loki nuzzled her neck, hands sliding down over her body in gentle caresses. His fingers ultimately sought her center, eager to get her slick and wet. Propped up on one elbow, he fingered her and kissed her mouth, liking the feel of one of her hands curling around his neck and the other running down his chest. It was a tangle of arms, but shifting a little allowed him to slide his fingers inside her and for her to grasp his cock and stroke him. The heel of her palm grazed the head, making him moan a little. Her breath came short and fast, little quiet pants into his mouth.

He groaned as her fingertips skimmed over his balls, finding the sensitive spot she had easily discovered the first time she had explored his body. All he could do was slide his fingers inside her, thumb at her clit, cheating with a thread of magic to stroke and fill her. Natasha gasped and arched, writhed in his arms, nails dragging a little along the shaft of his cock and the back of his neck. It was sweet and torturous, stoking his desire.

When he could take it no longer, sometime after the second time he brought her to orgasm with magic and his fingers, Loki shifted and slid inside her. She was smiling in contentment, eager for his touch, rising to meet his thrusts. "There," she gasped out on a deep stroke, and he held her hips in that position. His magic brushed against her breasts, stroking her nipples, and slid down her belly to touch her sensitive clit. When she came, shivering and crying out, her body tightened so much that he lost control and spilled into her.

Collapsing on top of her, Loki curled up and buried his face in the crook of her neck. Inhaling her scent, he tried to tell himself that there was no danger.

***

The final shape of the spell was a combination of runes of protection woven via _seidr_ into something that visually would appear like a cloak. Loki then used it to alter the _spá_ of the ship and each member of the crew. The gravitational effects from the different black holes and the central supermassive black hole would not be an issue to deal with any longer; for the duration of his spell, they simply didn't exist. The nav computers then would have no difficulty plotting a course through the cluster, leading to the central area that scanners couldn't see through. He had no idea how large the space was, or how many space walks it might take in order to locate the stone.

He also made it clear that if Yondu or any of his crew backstabbed him or Natasha in this venture, they would immediately lose the protection of his spell. It might mean that the ship would fly through an event horizon and be subject to the gravitational pull of a black hole. "I will enjoy watching you be shredded atom by atom if anything happens to either of us," Loki told him, a grim smile on his face.

"I know when to stick with a deal," Yondu had huffed. He and his crew were absolutely solicitous of their needs, only too aware of the risk involved in offending Loki. They were ruthless, not stupid or suicidal.

As much as Loki looked confident in his skill, he worried about the viability of spell. It was a completely new combination of magic types, as far as he knew, and he was relatively weak in the _spá,_ especially in comparison with his mo—the skill of others that taught him.

The ship moved slowly at first, Yondu's chief navigator not sure if he should trust Loki's spell in comparison to the gravitational pull and tidal forces of multiple black holes. When they skirted close enough to an event horizon that the navigator broke out into a cold sweat and nothing happened, he increased the speed. It still wasn't that fast, but the fact that they weren't been torn apart by the gravitational forces helped.

After nearly an hour, the ship cleared the densest part of the gasses to reach the center of the Siderite cluster. The sensors suddenly had data pinging back, and it came back with an oval disc in the center of the empty space, a palace in the center of it shaped similar to the grand palace of Asgard. It was also golden in color, with spires that were as tall as those on Asgard. Sensors indicated that there was a breathable atmosphere held in place despite the lack of rotation on the disc or any kind of mechanism to generate it. The entire disc was brilliantly lit, with no apparent darkness; the odd gravity of the suns and black holes likely kept the atmosphere and disc in place. The rest of the disc had some scrub vegetation and what looked like low trees, so there had to be water and possibly some kind of animal life to keep the ecosystem functional.

It was beautiful, and something in Loki's chest constricted painfully. _Home,_ he wanted to say. _I've finally come home._

"What the hell is that?" one of the Ravagers breathed, looking through the viewscreen.

"Mine to discover," Loki said quickly.

Before any of Yondu's men could even think to try coercing him in some way, Loki opened a portal to the entrance of the palace, grabbed Natasha about the waist, and pulled her through.

***

The Time Gem allowed the user total control over the past, present and future. Its most basic ability granted its user visions of possible futures, but with practice, the user could time travel, control the age of other beings and use the Time Gem as a weapon by trapping enemies or entire worlds in unending loops of time. When used with the other gems, it allowed its user to exist at all points in time simultaneously.

And now it was in Loki's hands.

Natasha hadn't realized what the Time Gem would look like, thinking it was the orange stone that Yondu had mentioned. She walked through the halls of the palace, but Loki had been drawn to the tallest spire, to the echoing chamber with the floating rose gold timepiece. It was an ovoid shape, hatch marks across its surface, and he could feel the tick-tick-tick of the universe as he approached it. The stone was inside of the casing, and its power called to him, stronger than the Soul Stone had, more than the scepter or the Tesseract ever had.

The _spá,_ which had always been so hard for him to manipulate, suddenly became so clear, so simple. It spun around him in all directions, golden roads with silver markings, and he could see _everything._

Loki could punish Asgard or change it all.

Unspooling time, Loki could make it so that he never discovered that he had been born a frost giant and simply adopted into Asgard's royal family. He could change things so that he was stronger, more like the burly warriors of the Einherjar, more easily accepted by the jarls of the realm. He wouldn't have the magical prowess, but then the elite wouldn't look down on him for his trickery. They wouldn't see him as less than, they wouldn't use his skills then denigrate him behind his back. He would be Thor's equal in truth, and he would have a place in the realm that had thrown him away.

Or he could ignore Asgard and go back even farther. He could go back in time to when Laufey had left his infant body exposed in their ramshackle temple. He could make the frost giant accept him. He could make Odin turn away from the temple, or refuse to take the small infant. Or he could make Odin refrain from anchoring the glamour into his very bones, making him think he was Asgardian.

He never would have met Natasha if either timeline occurred, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that. The peace he felt under her capable hands was one he wouldn't have learned of otherwise. The stillness inside of him, the quiet, the emptiness that felt full... No Asgardian woman would know of such things, as coddled and cosseted as they were supposed to be. Oh, they had their own strengths, their own forms of mastery, but Asgardian society didn't value their contributions as much as those of a warrior.

But being a master of time would mean that he could change things for her, too. He could make it so that she never experienced the pain of others leaving her, wouldn't have done all the terrible things that made up her ledger, wouldn't have been honed into such a merciless killer.

If he did that, though, would she still be Natasha? Would she have the facets that he wanted to know? Would she have the talent to deal with him in his moods?

Would they even still want each other?

Loki's heart seized at the thought of being alone. He needed someone with him; when alone, he too easily fell apart. He didn't like being honest with himself, but it was clear that he could plot and plan on his own, and change things quickly, but the outcome wasn't what he wanted. With Natasha at his side, it had been relatively easy to get the Soul Stone, though how they had done it left him feeling hollow inside. He still regretted the abuse Natasha had to suffer, even if she had been blasé about it and intimated receiving worse in her past.

How many things would unravel and change as he went through the strands of the _spá?_ It had been his weakest form of magic in the past, but now he had the Time Gem. Now he controlled the _spá_ with an ease that should have been frightening.

Instead, it felt tantalizing. Then again, he never did have too much sense.

Spinning through the web of time, gem tucked against his chest, he pulled apart the fabric of time and space to find the threads that led to his birth. Loki tracked its length, until the fateful trip with Thor, Sif and the Warriors Three to Jotunheim. He nudged his prior self out of the way, a slip and stumble on ice sending him away from the frost giant that had grasped his arm and released the tight hold that Odin's glamour had on him. Then that self had swung about and struck the giant, killing him before sprinting across the ice to aid Thor. Odin still came to stop Thor from making an utter fool of himself, averting war, but Loki didn't have the shard of doubt digging its way into his heart.

That Loki smiled without shadows in his eyes, without daggers in his fists. He stood straight and tall, to the side of Thor at his coronation, resentment only the faintest of traces in his soul, the agita of a younger brother being ignored during Thor's day. Odin and Frigga remained proud of him, so proud, and they were a united family. They appeared proud of him, even if it was all a lie, even if he could never achieve the throne or any kind of greatness because of his ignominious birth. It actually physically hurt to see Frigga dressed in green and gold, the favored colors of her sons, her smiles bright and beautiful. Loki wanted to reach out to hold her, crush her to him, bring her back to life.

He could, couldn't he? He could resurrect Frigga, make time unspool so that Malekith never killed her. And he could bring Natasha to him, have her smirk at his side. They could keep the shining city of Asgard running smoothly in ways Thor wouldn't be capable of.

The Natasha he pulled into Asgard was still mortal, soft and gentle, a girl that had never been tortured or turned into a weapon. She gave him shy smiles, followed his lead, willingly touched him and fell to her knees for him, longed to carry his child in her intact womb. They married, a splendid and jeweled affair, nearly rivaling the wedding of Thor and Sif.

She died. The twin sons she bore him tore her too badly, and the healers couldn't repair her body, even with the Soul Forge, even with his magic at their disposal. The light in her eyes faded, blood poured in a cascade from her broken body, her limbs fell limp to the table. Their sons wailed, as if sensing the way she had to give her life to create his, as if he knew already that he was missing someone vital. He had Nali and Vali, but at what cost?

Loki grieved, rage and spite and revulsion warring for supremacy in his heart. Frigga took his sons from him out of concern for their welfare, and the pain was absolute. It felt like a violation of his love and trust, a mockery of Natasha's memory. He stormed the palace looking for his sons, burned or froze or attacked, even killing the Einherjar that tried to stop him without harming him, knowing he had gone mad with grief. But Loki was beyond comfort, and he couldn't find his sons anywhere. He destroyed swaths of the palace, left bodies in his wake, attacked Thor and Sif, nearly strangled their daughter Thorin in her nursery, and was a hair away from killing Frigga himself.

That version of Loki, broken by loss of a different kind, never knew himself for the monster that he was at birth, but for the destruction he had wreaked. Odin had to cast him from Asgard, forbidding his return, banishing him from his sons' lives. The strain of it sent him into the Odinsleep, and the last thing Loki saw as he was dragged from the palace in chains was the stricken expressions on the faces of the royal family and the courtiers.

Unmanned by love and grief, Loki threw himself from the Bifrost into the Void, his guards nearly sharing his fate. As he fell, that Loki strangled himself with his own chains.

No, no, no.

Spinning backward along the webs of time, Loki searched for a different junction point. The alternate realities were infinite, after all. He could save Natasha. He could have that life with her, the smile on her lips and softness of her touch. She could raise their sons, she could live in splendor at his side.

Instead, he found her in a war zone, a child warrior, machine gun in hand, sighting down its length to shoot at the enemy. Her foster father was wounded, and she traded away her freedom for his safety. She was drawn into the training, ruthlessly marking targets with the Makarov in her hand, throwing knives from her boots or a well placed punch. There had been no question at all in her young mind. His life outweighed hers, and she willingly placed her head on the butcher's block to keep him safe. There was no regret, no taking it back. She poured her soul into the program, she did her missions, she suffered the abuse without complaint.

When she finally ran, going solo, her skills were deadly and unerring. Getting onto SHIELD's radar meant she was in competition with them. If Clint was sent after her, she lived and was recruited into the agency. If others had been sent instead, she was killed. Sometimes it was right away, a stray bullet making her bleed out in a back alley. Sometimes it was a game of cat and mouse, stretching across the months before she died escaping their crosshairs. At other times, it was a complete fluke, poor living conditions or bad food, accidental poisoning as she mixed up a deadly brew for a mark. Loki never found her in those lifetimes, and she never got a chance to match wits with him.

She still tricked him on the helicarrier if he invaded Earth with the Chitauri. He still raged, still wanted their team driven apart. His rule was to be complete; it was all he had trained for as a boy, so how could it be wrong?

But this was all wrong, wrong, wrong. This wasn't the way it should go. Loki couldn't tolerate this, didn't accept it. _This was not the future he wanted._

Time unraveled, stopped, started, stuttered. It was supposed to be better. He was supposed to be able to fix it all. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Stars winked in and out of existence outside the palace walls. The Galaxy's core was bright and new, stars and black holes spinning around each other in a delicate dance. Sooner or later, the distance between them would narrow. The black holes would siphon off matter from the stars, they would lose their angular spin, they would collide.

And even then, it wouldn't destroy any of the Infinity Stones or the gauntlet.

Howling, Loki pulled time apart again. He could freeze things in place with the gem, create an infinite loop of time. He could live with his gentle version of Natasha, relive the span of time between the courting and the conception of the twins. Then she would be all his, and she wouldn't die, and she would be forever.

Or, a better idea would be to make her immortal.

It wouldn't matter if her body was injured, she wouldn't die. She would be eternally young and agile, forever possessing her skill set. Loki would never have to worry about assholes beating her, forcing her to do depraved things, about her skin shredding beneath their hands. He wouldn't have to chance the misery of losing her, wouldn't have to experience her loss, too. Loki had lost everyone else, he couldn't lose her. He _couldn't._

Loki peeled apart the _spá_ again, hoping to find a way to change the shape of her lifeline, extend it to infinity. Or maybe he could find a different future that he would like to keep; there had to be _something_ in the vast potential of their lives that would suit his fancy. Natasha had different lovers in different lifetimes – soldiers, a fighter pilot, a teacher, a lawyer, a sharpshooter, millionaires, heroes. In various universes, she and Clint Barton were lovers, or Tony Stark, and in one she and Steve Rogers married and she bore him a son. Natasha had a relationship with spies that her current team hunted. She even kissed women; as tantalizing as Loki found that, he didn't stay to watch to see if the relationships developed any further than the teasing glimpses he caught.

"What reason do I give you to stay with me?" he asked the weaving of fate, heart sinking.

Could he change his own fate to ensure that she would stay? Could he be like those men and women? Even the spy put her welfare above his own, and looked after her when she had no idea of the past between them. Friends and allies trusted her, even when her reputation was smeared, and helped her move through the shadows and survive.

By the same token, Loki saw himself as a child, as an agent of chaos, as an enemy of Thor or his ally, in female form, or as a trigger for Ragnarok. At no time did his path cross Natasha's in a romantic or sexual sense.

He made a choking noise of despair. Was he destined to be alone and unhappy? Was he always going to be tortured?

"Loki."

Turning at the sound of Natasha's voice, he looked at her in agony, unable to speak.

"What are you doing?"

"I can tear apart the universe for you," he said, feeling as though his soul was scraped raw. "I can fix it, I know I can. Stitch different fates together, save you..."

She crossed the space between them and touched his hands. "No matter what happens, I would accept my fate as is. I would meet it, and I wouldn't complain."

"I would!"

Lifting his hands to her lips, she kissed his knuckles. "Don't."

"I don't want to lose you," he admitted in a whisper.

"I don't see the things that you see," she said slowly. "Magic isn't my thing. But if you can see this now, I'm guessing that's the last stone. We need to hide it from Thanos."

Loki nodded. "Leaving it here isn't an option. The other three stones are in my hideaway, but it already strains its containment."

"Another one—"

"Sooner or later, holding spells will fail and Thanos will find it. He can't have them, and these are too powerful to destroy. I could siphon off power until I explode and there would be more to spare in it."

"This is the fourth stone we have, and the other two are safe."

"I could trap Thanos in time. Maybe." He bit his lip uncertainly, eyes locked to hers.

She pressed his knuckles to her lips again. "You can do it. And if you add the power of another stone," she began.

"I can send you back to your friends," he blurted. "Otherwise, they could grow old and die before you get back to them."

"Loki," she said gently. "It probably will take a lot of energy to trap Thanos. I don't imagine that it's going to be easy. Save the galaxy first. If there's power left over, you can send me back. If not, we'll take the long way back."

Before this journey, he would have done just that. Knowing her now, he didn't want to leave her and he didn't want to her to feel the pain of loss. All her various lives had experienced too much pain already, and even in this one, there had been considerable pain. Yet she still continued with such grace, and without complaint, that it put him to shame.

He grasped her close and kissed her. "I wish you well," he murmured.

She couldn't react before he used the stone to warp her _spá,_ sending her back to Midgard and merging her with her magical clone.

Standing alone in the cavern, Loki clasped the stone tightly in his hands. As he thought, there was plenty of energy left in it; barely anything had been used to transport and change Natasha to ensure her safety. It would have been better to have her support, but she couldn't aid him in the magical working. None of the mortals could, and his throat closed up painfully.

Spacetime warped around him, sending the Ravagers far away, closer to Knowhere. The palace began to tremble, but Loki stood fast. Eyes shut, he thought of Thanos, easily finding the mad Titan's _spá_ in the Galaxy.

"What are you doing, boy?" the Titan intoned.

Thanos' _spá_ was an awful, tangled thing that would've made him scream before if he had tried to view it. But now Loki could read it, and he could weave the strands into a time prison, even without the Soul or Space stones.

The Time Gem protected Loki from Thanos' assault, and he could sense the shape of time all around him. He could grasp the threads of Thanos' fate, rearrange the way they were woven together, snip and rearrange the strength that the Titan had, the power built up from fear and intimation. It was easy to tune out the roar of Thanos' anger as he tried to pound against the energy of the Time Gem swirling around Loki. In Thanos' hands, he would have simply aged his enemies into oblivion. He wouldn't have understood the subtleties in its use, the true power that Time could wield against the universe.

When Loki was finished, Thanos was on his knees, howling with rage and pain, unable to move from the submissive position. The palace was crumbling all around them, but there would be enough left to protect Thanos from the elements on the disc. Maybe.

"You have all the time in the universe," Loki murmured, lips stretching into a parody of a smile. It was the power of the Time Gem that even had him standing; otherwise, he would have collapsed in front of Thanos and have been caught up in the same trap.

Thanos reached out to grasp Loki, but he was already being yanked away, outside of the trap that Loki had woven around Thanos and the disc. It was safely housed in the heart of the Galaxy, the gravitational pull of the black holes and suns ensuring that no one would be insane enough to try exploring it again. The Ravagers probably would think that he and Natasha died there, an explosion catapulting them across the space to Knowhere; their sensors certainly wouldn't be able to tell them any different, and the spell he had worked on the ship would fade away soon enough, leaving them vulnerable to gravitational effects again.

No, Thanos was well and truly trapped, and no one knew he was there. And no one in their right mind would ever try to use magic to explore the Siderite cluster again, not when magic didn't leave explorers safe from its tragic effects.

Exhausted, Loki lost his tenuous hold on consciousness.

***

Loki woke on a muddy bank, tangled in the twisting roots of a massive tree, brackish water lapping at his body. He groaned, not sure if he was even ready to be conscious yet. Around him rose the sense of ash or yew, holy trees often used in working magic; as he realized that he couldn't tell definitively if it was ash or yew, his eyes shot open and he struggled to sit up. The Time Gem was inside its casing, all but fused to his chest the way Iron Man had his arc reactor during the Battle of New York. Terror filled him, choked him, kept him from screaming or drowning in the water beneath the tree above him.

He was tangled in the roots of Yggdrasil. If he wasn't careful, he would be absorbed and become part of the Great Tree.

Gentle chatter reached his ears, and he saw three maidens nearby, knitting some kind of garment from the roots of tree. He knew them, the Norns deep in knowledge and feared by all who knew of magic. Urðr controlled that which happened, Verðandi controlled that which is happening, and Skuld controlled that which should be. The ladies Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld kept the _ørlǫg_ of men, shaped the _wyrd_ and enforced the laws of reality. When not knitting fate, they watered the roots of the sacred Tree from the wells beneath the three main roots; decay and rot was one of the signs of coming Ragnarok. Stories told of the other occupants of Yggdrasil, and they rarely signaled benevolent times for mortals. Níðhöggr was the great serpent that ate the roots of the Tree. There was an eagle, and between its eyes lived the hawk Veðrfölnir. Its eyes were sharp, and conveyed sight to the ancient eagle, telling it of the Nine Realms. The squirrel Ratatoskr scurried up and down the trunk, carrying messages between the eagle and Níðhöggr. The stags Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór consumed foliage of the Tree. They scattered and added to the destruction of the Nine Realms during Ragnarok, and seeing them signaled poor fortune.

It was possibly a good thing that Loki could only see the Norns, though they were present at the births and deaths of all things, deciding their fates.

The three looked like triplets, not the maiden, mother and crone of legends Frigga had read to him as a child. Urðr looked up, and Loki knew it was she even though he couldn't have said how he knew it to be so. She smiled, eyes alight with mischief. "We have waited for you to wake, Loki of the Galaxy."

Verðandi chuckled. "You need to decide if you choose to be Laufeyson or Odinson. That is too awkward a title for you, child. The Galaxy is too large a home to claim."

Skuld remained silent, snipping the end of the thread that Verðandi had measured. She put aside her scissors and added the thread to the loom that Loki hadn't seen. He had thought they were knitting, but apparently they were spinning, measuring, cutting. Or maybe they could do all of it at once, and his mind was too feeble to comprehend their true power.

Loki managed to untangle himself from the Roots of the Tree, and stumbled to their side. "Norns," he murmured, voice ragged and raw. "My apologies for invading your home."

"You come at our summons," Verðandi told him briskly.

Urðr tapped the Time Gem in his chest. "This is quite dangerous, Loki."

"It will consume you, if you let it," Skuld said, her voice ponderous and deep despite her youthful appearance. If he looked closely, though, Loki could see the white straggly hair, sagging skin and wrinkled visage beneath the youth.

He swallowed and nodded. "I didn't intend to keep it."

Verðandi laughed, not unkindly, shaking her head. "What did you think would happen?"

"He doesn't," Urðr commented, a sly smile on her lips. "Therein lies the problem. I wonder why we thought it was a good idea to weave that into the making of him?"

"My idea," Skuld replied, taking up her scissors. "Come here, child."

Compelled to follow her direction, Loki crawled to her side. She loomed large and ferocious above him, like a giant to a toddler. The golden blades of the scissors flashed in front of his eyes, and he almost screamed in terror at the sight of her.

Unperturbed by his stricken expression, Skuld quickly snipped the Time Gem free of his flesh, then sat back down, again sized as a youthful maiden.

"The other stones," he stuttered, looking between the three Norns. "You should take them."

"Of course," Verðandi replied with a smile.

"We have," Urðr added with a nod, lifting a chain from her neck. Looped on the silver chain were tiny gems that looked like the Tesseract, the Aether, and the Soul Gem.

"The others will return to us in time," Skuld said, unperturbed as ever. She handed Urðr the Time Gem, and Loki watched as the orange gem seemed to shrink into a tiny charm that attached to the silver chain. It was hidden away under her robes again.

"It was my fault they were lost," Verðandi admitted sheepishly. "But it's so wonderful to see the changes to the worlds that they have made. So many stories."

"Death," Loki corrected, then wished he could take it back. He managed not to clap his hands over his mouth in horror, and wondered if they would take up their needles and stitch his mouth shut for his audacity in condemning their actions. They were the _Norns._ Who was he to judge their majesty?

But Skuld nodded. "So it was, so it shall be. Cycles immemorial, and it will happen again."

"The last two stones are in the possession of the Nova Corps and the android Vision."

Verðandi nodded. "We are aware."

"I have seen such things," Urðr reminded Loki.

"They will return in time," Skuld repeated.

"And what is my role now?" Loki murmured.

"I will keep your workings in place," Skuld said, standing, scissors still in her hand. Loki managed to hold still, not tumble backward in terror. "The tyrant overstepped the bounds of his original design, but he was outside the reach of my scissors when you found him." She nodded at him, and Loki felt the knot in his chest release.

"We can send you elsewhere," Verðandi said cheerfully, shaking her golden hair over her shoulder. Verðandi nodded at her sister. "She has seen what matters to you."

Loki's throat closed up. "I would not do her harm. Not more than I have done already."

Urðr seemed to approve of that. "There has been much done in the past."

"You will do more in this time," Verðandi reminded him.

"And still more yet in the future," Skuld intoned.

"But it is not our place to direct it. You have not altered your own fate when you could have," Verðandi said with a pleasant smile. "And you did not change the fate of your lady love, when you could have done the same."

"I sent her back to her home—"

"As she was. Intact. Her fate is the same."

The pain in his chest was back. Natasha would grow old and die. She wouldn't care for him, not the way he had come to care for her. Was this love? Oh, how it _hurt._

Verðandi took Loki in his arms, and he was suddenly reminded of Frigga holding him as a child when he had hurt himself during training with the Einherjar. Loki sobbed, great, heaving ugly cries, the rage and pain and grief of Frigga's loss coming out all over again. Verðandi soothed him, the Mother, and the Maiden and Crone kept a respectful distance.

"Sometimes," Verðandi whispered as she stroked his hair, "to grow is to lose. Sometimes there is no reason whatsoever. You don't see the pattern of it."

"For a while, I could."

"Look to the loom," Skuld said.

It was small but impossibly large, the fates of all living things in the universe caught in the warp and weft of it. There was a pattern, glorious and horrible, terrible and awe inspiring. Yet the moment he took his eyes from it, Loki lost sight of the shape of it.

He sagged in Verðandi's arms, and she patted his back in a maternal way, soothing without being patronizing. "It is beyond the scope of you, Loki. But for a time, you held our power in your hands. And I am pleased that you didn't abuse it."

Loki looked at her, hope and tears in his eyes, yearning for the acceptance in her gaze to remain on him forever. Soon enough, he would fail again. Soon enough, something would go wrong, and he would stumble and flail, trying to plot his way out of his impulsive mistakes.

"We'll give you back to her," Skuld said, suddenly grinning at him. For an instant, he could see the death's head grin behind her youthful smile. Verðandi giggled, and Urðr's laugh seemed to carry horrid knowledge in it.

"You've entertained us in the hunt," Urðr commented, fingers moving as if she was running them over a section of threads on the loom or shifting knitting needles on the round. Was she making a shroud? The sudden thought paralyzed him.

"Follow your fate, Loki," Skuld said, taking him from Verðandi's embrace. "We'll be watching."

And then in the space of a breath, he was standing in upstate New York, outside of the New Avengers training facility.

The sun was shining, and he was surrounded by lush, green grass. There were trees in the distance, and the building of glass, chrome and cement. It stank of Stark's modern design team, and Loki hated it on sight.

Natasha was here somewhere, as were the other Avengers she valued so much. He believed that years had passed since he had first retrieved her, but he couldn't be certain. Too much time would have passed since he had last seen Natasha, and he didn't even know if she would welcome his return to her life or curse it.

He took a deep, cleansing breath. No use in fearing the unknown. No use in being a sniveling coward, afraid of what could be.

Loki would do what he did best: charge forward without thought, creating plans as he went, not looking backward with regret.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> So... I may have ended this in a way that the series isn't necessarily done. ^^;
> 
> Nothing else is written yet, but there are vague whispers of plot in the back of my head, if anyone is interested in me continuing this.


End file.
